Harlingen, city, Cameron county, southern Texas, U.S., located 28 miles (45 km) northwest of Brownsville, with which it forms an industrial-agribusiness-port complex. Founded in the early 1900s and named after Harlingen, Netherlands, by its pioneer settler, Lon C. Hill, Sr., it became a station on the St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico (now Missouri Pacific) Railroad. The city, modern and well planned, is located in the centre of an intensively cultivated agricultural region. It has food-processing plants and is a major transport and distribution hub for cotton, citrus fruits, and vegetables of the lower Rio Grande valley. Port Harlingen, with a grain elevator, oil terminals, chemical plants, and other industries, is on the Arroyo Colorado Canal, a spur of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. Immediately south is Six Shooter Junction (a reconstructed frontier village); the Confederate Air Force Ghost Squadron and Museum, featuring historic combat aircraft, is at Rebel Field, 4 miles (6 km) northeast in Harlingen Industrial Air Park. The Rio Grande Valley Museum, including the restored Lon C. Hill home, contains documents and artifacts relating to the area’s history. The Marine Military Academy (1963) is close by, as is the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, which harbours large numbers of migratory and resident birds. Inc. city, 1910. Pop. (2000) 57,564; Brownsville-Harlingen Metro Area, 335,227; (2010) 64,849; Brownsville-Harlingen Metro Area, 406,220.

Learn More in these related articles:

constituent state of the United States of America. It became the 28th state of the Union in 1845. Texas occupies the south-central segment of the country and is the largest state in area except for Alaska. The state extends nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from north to south and about the same...

city, seat (1848) of Cameron county, extreme southern Texas, U.S. It lies along the Rio Grande opposite Matamoros, Mexico, 22 miles (35 km) from the river’s mouth. With Harlingen and San Benito it forms an industrial, agribusiness, and port complex.

an improved navigable waterway along the Gulf Coast of the United States, extending from Apalachee Bay, Florida, westward to the Mexican border at Brownsville, Texas, a distance of more than 1,100 miles (1,770 km). In part artificial, the waterway consists of a channel paralleling the coast behind...